To keep track what I have been up to and my thoughts on issues important to me.

Thursday, January 15, 2015

the niece's quilt

On to happier topics, the first being, the quilt I finished up for my brother's youngest daughter's wedding.

I really like how this quilt turned out. It is the combination of three quilting ideas I had.

The lone star block was a twin quilt-top I made years ago while taking a quilting class on how to make lone star quilts. The border is the border for the lone star quilt-top expanded out to go around a king-size quilt. I liked the idea of it only being a partial border with the quilting echoing the block pattern for the other two corners. The twin top had lots of open space that just begged for some beautiful hand-quilting that I was never going to get around to doing.

The big stars were an experiment with blocks following a quilting tutorial from the Missouri Star Quilt Company's you-tube channel. I loved how the blocks turned out but didn't like the fabric I used for the sashing strips. The sashing fabric took away instead of enhancing the blocks. Oh, and be careful when building the blocks because you can get left and right-handed blocks. I have one oddball block. ; >)

The pinwheels were part of the original idea I had for the quilt. You can get left and right-handed pinwheels, too! So pay better attention than I did, when you are setting up your half-square units before sewing into pinwheels. I have a few extra blocks that are opposites laying around now.

The quilting was stitch-in-the-ditch, running diamonds; echo quilting the colored strip of the border and using a cereal bowl to draw curved lines on the sashing.

For something special, I used some gingham blocks that Mother had made on the back. I thought she(the niece) would get a kick out of having some of Mother's blocks incorporated into her quilt.

All I did was square up the blocks and I got to spread Mom's love of gingham around to others in the family. : >)